A Ryan POV oneshot
by melanie39
Summary: Ryan reflects on why he feels the need to get a job and leave Newport. Based on previews for The Perfect storm. No spoilers.


This is a one-shot, based entirely on the previews for this week's show. No other spoilers are included. Thanks to Loracj for the betaing and Cheekymice for the encouragement.

Ryan POV

Ryan spends a lot of time reliving his first year in Newport. He conveniently forgets the Luke/Marissa thing, the Oliver debacle. But he remembers what it was like to go to school every day with Seth. What it was like to come home each day and have Kirsten and Sandy ask them how their day went. He remembers how quickly he got used to sitting around the table in the evenings, all four of them together, sometimes Marissa with them, or Anna, or Summerand the laughing and the joking and the snarks about Kirsten's cooking and Seth's babbling. He remembers Sandy rubbing his hand through his hair and his eyes twinkling as he enjoys his family around him. He remembers how he'd lie in the pool house and think about the people inside and know he could go in whenever he wanted and be a part of their family. That there was always a warm welcome and a comfortable seat and a movie to watch with a bowl of popcorn beside him. And sometimes he'd just lie in the pool house and watch the door and know that he had three years stretching ahead of him, when all he had to do was just be here and be part of it. And when you're just sixteen that seems like an awful long time.

Ryan thinks a lot about his life now in Newport. He thinks about it when his tutor sits across from him at the kitchen table, grading his work. He stares out the window and chews his pencil and wonders what Seth and Summer are doing at school. He thinks, ridiculously, about the comic book club and the stupid meetings at lunch when Zach and Seth and the kids from Junior High pour over the new editions, out that day that one of the kids has skipped over to buy on his bike in between classes. If he was there, he'd be rolling his eyes at Seth's geeky comments and hoping that members of the football team wouldn't choose that moment to walk into the lunch hall. He thinks about Marissa at Newport Union, struggling to make new friends and fit in, knowing that she doesn't and probably never will. He thinks about Sandy and Kirsten and how they seem almost as close now as when he first met them. He marvels at how after all they've been through, they've emerged as strong as ever.

Ryan knows the Cohens love him. He's not sure if they know that he loves _them_. He told Kirsten as much at the intervention, and he thinks she got it. She did that double checking thing, where she stopped and swallowed before she got all defensive and told everyone she wasn't going. He's pretty sure Sandy knows. Ryan took him by surprise that night when Trey left. Ryan took himself by surprise if truth be told. He thinks Seth knows but it's hard to tell. They bothknow how _Seth _feels, there's never been any doubt has there? Because Seth wears his heart on his sleeve. And even if there was doubt? Well, there was the whole blanking of him when he left for Chino last summer, and the stumbling shy grin when they stood on the porch in Portland and both silently agreed they were going back to Newport. But he's not sure that Seth gets how much _he_ means to Ryan and it's not the sort of thing a boy like Ryan says. He hopes Seth gets it in his actions but right now, if Seth _did_ know, then Ryan is pretty sure he's sitting in his room thinking he must have got it wrong. Ryan wishes he could explain it. He wishes he could tell the Cohens why he wants to leave. Why he _has _to leave. Why staying here in Newport is like driving a knife through his heart and twisting it every few minutes. Just reminding him not to get too comfortable.

_"**I got a job…"**_

"_**So you want to throw away your future?"**_

"_**I tried it your way. It didn't work…"**_

"_**You have to keep trying!"**_

"_**No! I don't!"**_

Sometimes he wishes he were Seth. If he were Seth, then Sandy would have stood up from the dinner table and flatly refused to let him go. He would have insisted that Seth give up the ridiculous notion of dropping out of school and sailing away on a boat. And at this point Ryan smiles because, yeah, Seth's already done that.

But Ryan isn't Seth and although he knows that Sandy and Kirsten do and _will _always care for him as much as they do Seth, they still treat him differently. They treat him differently because he _is_ different. Because he's Ryan. And Ryan is not the lonely protected only son of a rich Newport family. And it's not because they don't _want _to yell and get angry and say he can't leave. But he knows they feel they can't do that. He knows they don't feel they have the right to do that to him. And the thing is? Ryan wishes they would. He really wishes Sandy would slam his fist on the table and flatly refuse to let him go. But he's heard Sandy talking to Kirsten in hushed tones in their room as he walks past on his way from Seth's room. He's heard him tell her they need to let him go, because if they don't, they risk losing him altogether and Sandy's not willing to contemplate that eventuality. And Ryan knows that is ridiculous because he can't ever see a time in his life when he wouldn't want to be with the Cohens. And that's it. Because Ryan knows that since he arrived in Newport, since his mom waved goodbye to him outside the pool house that hot fall day, he's had this warm security blanket just within his reach whenever he needs it. Like the old ragged cloth he carried around everywhere in Fresno till his Dad, in a fit of frustration, threw it on the bonfire he had lit to clear some trash in the yard, announcing that Ryan was too big to still have that crap. And Trey had laughed and cuffed Ryan as he stood and cried with his thumb in his mouth. And then his dad went away, and all the security in Ryan's world fell apart as his mother hauled them to Chino with barely a backward glance.

Ryan knows Sandy doesn't get it. He looks at him, bewildered, struggling to understand why Ryan would throw away two years of hard work and good grades at Harbor. All Sandy ever wanted to do was escape his family and make something of himself, help others make something of themselves. And that's why he doesn't understand. Because Ryan doesn't want to escape this family, and making something of himself doesn't mean getting a college degree or a fancy job.

Kirsten casts agonizing looks across the table and Ryan doesn't miss the pleading in her eyes as she looks at Sandy. He feels kind of sick. He doesn't want to hurt her. But he doesn't want to hurt himself either. Later, she leans against the wall in the pool house, watching as he packs up his clothes in his duffle bag, reminding him not to forget this or that. Her voice is quiet and Ryan knows she's struggling to hold herself together. If she helps herself to a large chardonnay later, it will be his fault.

Ryan knows Seth doesn't get it. He goes off to school every day with Summer. He goes to class. He goes to detention. He helps Summer with the Harbor School Social committee. He doesn't sit alone at a table for four hours a day with only the company of a teacher. And OK, Seth jokes and says the whole tutor thing is hot, at least in an eighties John Hughes movie sort of way, and Ryan has to admit, Miss Read is fairly attractive, for a forty something year old woman, but really does Seth really imagine that an idle daydream here and there is better than being in school? Does he think after Miss Read goes at lunchtime that it's fun for Ryan to go running on his own, to sit and do homework on his own, to fill in the hours before life in the Cohen house begins again? What does Seth imagine that he does? Sit and play the PS2 with Kirsten? Yeah, actually he has done that, but as Seth says, that's all kinds of wrong. Moms shouldn't play the PS. And Ryan has to admit, it was weird when Kirsten started spouting all that samurai stuff and for a moment she wasn't like a mom and Ryan didn't like that.

Marissa doesn't get it. To her, a boyfriend is someone who's there, to go out on dates, to be at the end of the phone for late night talks, for making out with after school and at the weekends. It'snot someone who's a thousand miles away hauling fish from the side of a boat, and someone she won't see for weeks or months on end. And Ryan's told her that she's part of his future, but he doesn't think she wants to believe it, because she doesn't understand why he has to go away in the first place. And she's yelled at him and cried, and said she thought the whole thing about sleeping together had actually meant a commitment on both their parts. He doesn't like to remind her that when they finally did it, it was the night before she was going away and they were facing the exact same situation. And yes, it meant commitment, to him at least. He who has always before taken sex as an immediate thing. He tried really hard to show her that them waiting was just the point. And she's actually just another reason why he has to go and he can't tell her that she is. He sees that she needs friends at her new school . God knows he sees that. But he also sees the way that kid Johnny looks at her, and Ryan thinks it won't be long before he does something, another thing he'll regret. And he doesn't want it to be like Oliver all over again. And she can't help it, it's not her fault, but he thinks if he's not there, he won't think about it, and then it won't eat away at him. And anyway, if he's miles away he can't punch him right?

Ryan doesn't really get it. He has a father, a mother, a brother. He has a girlfriend. He has a warm bed, a good teacher, money in his pocket, the chance of a future. And he likes it. He really likes it.

_**"This is your home now, and the door is always open…"**_

The Cohens have left him to finish up alone. He zips up his bag and casts one more look around the room. The drafting table sits accusingly in the corner. The football sits motionless on the floor. The bed is neatly made. Ryan is ready to go now, and if he waits, he may never feel ready again.

The End


End file.
